How to Get Your Body Caftan-Ready for Summer

About a month ago, I was eating at a restaurant in West Hollywood with a friend. We’d already devoured faux In-N-Out burgers, the contents of the dim sum and sushi carts, and a generous helping of fries. She didn’t seem particularly concerned about our Falstaffian night of consumption. “I’m getting ready to go to a caftan party,” she told me. Instead of a bachelorette party, a friend of hers was having a house party with caftans as a required dress code. When I returned to New York, I saw that Christina Hendricks is also a fan of caftan parties (and even got Jimmy Fallon to wear one). One can only hope that, like juicing, injecting vitamin B-12, using hella as an adverb, and doing those weird IV drips, caftan parties are a chill West Coast trend that’s headed east very soon. That’s how it always starts: Your much-cooler-to-the-point-where-they’re-slumming friend tells you about it, then a minor celebrity raves about it, then everyone is suddenly doing it.

It’s now late May, which means that women’s publications are in full bikini-body crisis mode. A Vogue headline blares, “How to Get a Beach Body in Two Weeks.” Self magazine might as well display a visible forehead vein: Get that bikini body or else! (“SUMMER SEXY STARTS NOW,” screams their current cover.) These articles emphasize a Spartan regimen of salt-reduction, dry brushing, and tiny, fishy meals. Perhaps there’s the occasional Pyrrhic “cheat day,” but overall these prescriptions do not spell “summer fun.”

But getting a caftan body — now, that is far more pleasurable. Below, the Cut’s steps to getting yourself caftan-ready for the warmer months. (The best news: Literally every step but the first is optional.)

1. Select a caftan of your chosen gauge and length. Stroke its gauzy fabric and whisper into its folds.